


Close To Bitter

by voleuse



Category: Battlestar Galactica
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-22
Updated: 2005-09-22
Packaged: 2017-10-04 09:58:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five people Lee Adama never frakked. Or maybe he did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close To Bitter

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through 2.09.

_i. Ellen Tigh_

They are in a bar. He is twenty, and when he asks, she tells him she's thirty-five.

He doesn't believe her, but then her gaze trails down the side of his face like a claw.

He thinks she looks familiar, but he also understands the glances the other pilots in the bar are giving her.

She's been here before, and maybe often.

But he's had a few more drinks than advisable, and he can't afford to get in a fight this evening. If he lands in the hack one more time this month, he'll owe Starbuck a dozen cigars. The expensive kind.

"Another drink?" he offers his uninvited companion.

"How generous." She puts her hand on his knee. "And call me Ellen, please."

She really does look familiar.

He shakes his head, clears his thoughts. When she asks what's on his mind, he tells her it's nothing, and smiles.

It finally clicks, a while later, but by then it's already too late.

_ii. Anastasia "Dee" Dualla_

Afterwards, Dee pulls her uniform back together, doesn't meet his eyes.

He sits up, tugs a sheet over his lap. Not because he's embarrassed, but just to even things out.

"Hey," he says, "is something wrong?"

Dee's tying her hair back into a ponytail, and for a second, he flashes back to the way her hair felt, sliding through his fingers.

She's still not looking at him.

"Dee," he tries again. "Come on, talk to me."

She shrugs into her jacket. "This was a mistake," she mutters.

He frowns. "What do you mean?"

Then he realizes what he missed, what he forgot when she appeared in the barracks, pushed him against his locker.

"Are you and Billy still--"

"I don't know," she tosses over her shoulder, and then she's out the hatch and gone.

He groans, falls back onto his bunk. He tells himself he's not at fault, but he feels like dirt anyway.

_iii. Laura Roslin_

Elosha announces she's going to meditate in the ship's chapel.

She is, Lee notices, very careful not to look at Laura as she leaves.

Laura's attention, incidentally, is not on Elosha.

When they're alone, finally, when Laura sways toward him in an entirely distracting way, Lee focuses sideways and leans back against the wall.

He hopes he looks as nonchalant as she does.

She raises her eyebrows, quirks the corner of her mouth.

"It seems we've been left to our own devices," she muses aloud.

"Seems so," he replies.

"I can't imagine what they expect us to do," she continues. "All by ourselves."

"In half an hour?" He shrugs. "Restore the foundations of democracy."

"Lee," she murmurs, and he, helplessly, turns to face her.

"Madam President?"

"Elosha is very fond of meditation." Her smile blossoms into something else entirely. "We have at least an hour and a half."

He chuckles, and her hand is warm against his arm.

"I bow to your experience," he says, and dips his head.

Her answering laugh is short, breathless. "Can I count on that?"

He reaches forward, brushes her waist with his fingertips.

"It's a promise."

_iv. Karl "Helo" Agathon_

Lee runs out of money after the third hand of triad, puts his jacket and a bottle of ambrosia down as his stakes for the fourth.

He loses those, too, and has to offer academic assistance on the fifth round.

"Excellent." Kara blows a ring of smoke past her hand of cards. "There's an astrophysics paper I've been trying not to write."

Lee rolls his eyes. "I'm not doing your homework, Kara."

"We'll see." She sticks her tongue out at him, then turns her attention to her other victim. "What about you, Karl? Or are you going to pussy out again?"

Helo's out of credit, out of candy, and out of ambrosia. But he's still smiling.

"Tell you what, Starbuck." Helo leans his elbows against the table. "You win this hand, I'll owe you one."

She tilts her head. "One what?"

"Whatever you want." He leers.

Lee coughs. "Are we going to play cards, or should I go book you two a room?"

"And break poor Boomer's heart?" Kara snorts.

"Let's leave the rooks out of this," Helo mutters, then puts his marker on the table. "I call."

Lee does the same, then sets out his hand. "I've got a pair of ranks," he offers, and knows he's lost when Kara giggles.

Helo, however, is oblivious to his doom, because he's fanning his cards out on the table. "Four on a run."

"What a shame, Helo." Kara slaps her hand down, spreads her cards to the chorus of their groans. "Full colors."

"I'm not doing your homework," Lee repeats.

Kara smirks, then stares at them. "Tell you what, boys." Leans back in her chair and crosses her arms behind her head. "I'll wipe out both your debts if the two of you do one thing for me."

Lee narrows his eyes. "What?"

She straightens, brings her hands together in a smack. "Kiss."

Lee blinks. "Kiss...him?"

She nods.

Lee looks at Helo, who seems amused, but not displeased.

"What's the matter, Kara?" Helo is saying, "Fantasizing isn't enough anymore?"

She does not deny it, but folds her arms, taps her fingers together.

"I'm waiting."

"Kara," Lee protests, "you've got to be _oomf_\--"

Because Helo's grabbed him by the back of the neck, smashed their mouths together in something resembling what might be a kiss.

And he doesn't let go.

This, Lee thinks, is embarrassing.

But he doesn't break away, either.

_v. Kara "Starbuck" Thrace_

The rain patters against the makeshift canopy above them, and the moon filters down through the trees.

Kara shifts under her blankets beside him, and it's the seventh time in the past three minutes that she's done it.

Lee's been keeping count, because he can't help himself.

She keeps squirming, and they're on a gods-damned planet, and he wishes he was still polishing his gun.

The eleventh time she moves, he reaches over and pokes her in the shoulder.

"Could you stop doing that?" he hisses.

She rolls to face him, bringing her body mere inches apart from his.

"What's the matter, Lee," she murmurs, "am I keeping you up?"

She smells like rain, and dirt, and sweat.

He turns his head, and he's close enough to see when she bites her bottom lip.

"No more than usual," he responds, eventually.

She laughs, a quick huff of breath that tickles his neck.

"It's hard, isn't it?" she asks.

"What?"

"Being here," she clarifies.

"Oh. Right." He sighs. "Yeah."

She wiggles closer to him, close enough to touch.

He does not think about that.

He does not think about that with such concentration, in fact, that when her hand slides over him, around him, it takes him completely by surprise.

He gasps sharply, and she silences him with a kiss.


End file.
